“Percussion” Painting Energy
Thank you Jim Brock for your patience with me— taking pictures and posing while I tried to do you justice! I’ve had so much fun with this piece. I was not worried about doing a “likeness” – although I think it does look like him. It is part of my “Musician Series” that I am slowly putting together. Mapped out with a brush and finished completely with knife — using only four colors!
The Zorn palette has been my go-to palette lately for portraits. I’m constantly amazed at the range I can get with only four colors – especially since two of them are black and white!!! It’s quite freeing to limit my choices. For those of you who are interested I’m using yellow ochre, Cadmium red medium, Mars black and Titanium white. And for those of you who are really interested, I’ll be teaching a class on painting the portrait from life using the Zorn palette. It starts on September 12 as a six week class. It will be a small class — maximum 6 people. Right now I have 3 spots left. Please let me know if you’d like more information.
I worked from photographs in “Percussion”. I had to pull the hands from two different photos to get a composition that I was happy with. Because of the knifing, there’s quite a bit of texture on this piece – which doesn’t register very well in the reproduction. There are broken edges throughout the painting, but I wanted the emphasis on the broken edges around his hands to bring your eyes there. Hoping that it will also give you a sense of the amazing energy that comes when Jim Brock plays percussion. He’s quite amazing! And sometimes it’s not just drums — it’s an assortment of percussion pieces—some are designed for that purpose and some are incorporated through Jim’s incredible creativity. I’m hoping to reach a level of mastery that Mr. Brock brings to his music in my painting one of these days.
Painting the energy of the music, rhythm and the people is my goal with “Percussion” and my musician series. Hoping they will push some visual energy into the rooms they occupy while the music keeps playing….
